Commissioners apply 'contract levers' over WWL diagnostic waits

PERFORMANCE: Commissioners are applying “contract levers” to the trust for failing to meet the target of having no more than one per cent of diagnostics patients waiting for more than six weeks.

NHS Greater Manchester’s latest peformance report states: “WWL has more than one per cent of patients (78 patients) waiting over six weeks for diagnostics; the problem specialities are colonoscopy, cystoscopy, flexi-sigmoidoscopy, gastroscopy and urodynamics.

“Changes to booking and scheduling have improved the end achievement and wait times on endoscopy in July. However, diagnostic failure on X-ray means that WWL has breached again in July 2012. NHS Ashton, Leigh & Wigan [Clinical Commissioning Group] is escalating this to WWL’s Chief Executive and contract levers are being applied.”

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